A Comic Genius Goes To The Movies Sctv's Eugene Levy At Home On New Turf

September 2, 1986|By Larry Kart, Chicago Tribune

At this point in his career, Eugene Levy is no stranger to movie fans.

He has played the not-so-nice scientist who tried to entrap mermaid Daryl Hannah in Splash, a greasy used-car salesman in National Lampoon's Vacation and a no less greasy role in this summer's Club Paradise -- a film that has received, shall we say, mixed reviews. His latest movie is a comedy called Armed and Dangerous now playing at the University 8 Cinema and Fashion Village 8, which features him and John Candy as a duo of ne'er-do-well security guards.

Like so many of the performers who have made it as movie comedians these days, Levy has deep roots in the Second City tradition of improvised satirical humor. Levy's fellow veterans of the Chicago and Toronto Second City troupes (and the Canadian troupe's brilliant offshoot, the Second City TV series) include Candy, Rick Moranis, the late John Belushi, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Shelley Long, Dan Aykroyd, Dave Thomas, Martin Short, Andrea Martin and Catherine O'Hara, plus the comedy writer-directors Harold Ramis (Animal House, Caddyshack, etc.) and Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters).

So one wonders if Levy has any insights into what has to be the most difficult problem these performers have faced: How to transform a style of humor that was aimed at a hip and sophisticated cabaret audience into something that will get laughs from the relatively young crowd that goes to see comedy films these days.

''Well,'' said Levy, ''the big transition for me -- or at least the hardest thing I've had to deal with in making films -- has been how to do it without a whole lot of makeup on.

''I mean for seven years on SCTV we really hid behind a lot of makeup. We kind of became the characters we played because we looked like those people; and whatever look we wanted, we could get -- the beards, the putty on the nose and so forth. On film, though, you're really out there on your own, looking pretty much like yourself.

''I remember doing the little scene I had in National Lampoon's Vacation. I went down there for the day to shoot it, Harold Ramis was directing, and I got to him first thing in the morning and said, 'Let's see, I'm playing a used-car salesman so I was thinking of having maybe a little pencil moustache -- something like that.' And Harold said, 'Nope, you look fine just the way you are.'

''And I said, 'No, wait a second. You don't seem to understand. I'm playing a used-car salesman here. All right, forget about the moustache. Sideburns. Let's bring the sideburns down a little and make them kind of thin. How about that?' And Harold said, 'Nope, you're fine just the way you are.'

''It was very strange, like the first time I'd had to really play a character instead of hiding behind one of those cheap looks we went for on the TV show. But that's what acting is about, I've discovered -- looking like yourself but playing somebody else.''

But SCTV clearly seems to be the core experience for him -- as indeed it was for the group of dedicated viewers who followed its seven-year run on a variety of local, network and cable outlets.

The characters Levy came up with for SCTV were unfailingly hilarious and surprisingly wide in range -- from Sid Dithers, his mumbling-bumbling Jewish grandfather; to game-show host Alex Trebel; anchorman Earl Camembert; rocking Mel Slurp (the host of Mel's Rockpile); the humpbacked sidekick to John Candy's ''Dr. Tongue''; financial adviser Brian Johns; Phil, entrepreneur of nails, carpeting, etc., who made his own disastrously awkward commercials; Dr. Sabian on the soap-opera parody Days of the Week; and, of course, Levy's two most memorable creations, the innocently grotesque Eastern European accordian maestro Stan Schmenge and the greasiest and most egomaniacal Las Vegas comic of them all, Bobby Bittman.

''I know without question that SCTV was a good show,'' Levy admitted. ''And I don't think there's anything that any of us has done since, on film or anywhere else, that has given us the same kind of creative highs.

''But by the time we finished the last season of SCTV for the Cinemax cable network, it had gotten to the point where we just couldn't think of another thing to parody. It seemed like we'd done everything; and if we hadn't, somebody else had. We couldn't come up with any more original ideas, so we knew it was time to end the show.''

Parody, however, was not quite the name of SCTV's game; or at least it wasn't after awhile.

''I think,'' Levy said, ''that the show definitely moved away from satire and parody and into character comedy. While we started out as an extension of Second City, where sharp satire is the goal, over the years we leaned more on the characters to create their own life and their own world.